Eastern Red Cedar

Juniperus virginiana

In winter, when most things are leafless, the evergreens are so much more noticeable.  Last week we looked at eastern white pine.  This week's species is the eastern red cedar, which is not a cedar at all, but a juniper.  In fact, no true cedars occur naturally in North America, although several are cultivated.  Both true cedars and junipers are conifers, just like the Virginia pine and white pine we considered in earlier species of the week.  Junipers produce seed cones which do not become woody like the cones of pines.  Instead they become soft, juicy and blue, and resemble berries.  They do not open to drop their seeds like pine cones, but instead are eaten by birds which disperse the seeds in their droppings.  This is a very successful adaptation.  Junipers have large ranges; for example, red cedar is found from New Brunswick to South Dakota and south to Texas and Georgia.  In contrast, the closest relatives of junipers, the cypresses, produce large woody cones and large seeds, and are found only in small isolated populations.

Eastern red cedar is the only tree-like juniper in the east; two other eastern species are low, sprawling shrubs.  Red cedars grow up to 90 feet tall, though most are fairly short, as seen in the picture above left.  The have two kinds of leaves, scale like leaves that hug the twigs, as seen at left, and needle-like leaves that make the twigs scratchy when touched, as seen at right.  Individual trees can have mostly scale-like leaves, mostly needle-like leaves or a mixture of both.  The seed cones (berries) are small, less than half an inch wide, and blue with a whitish coating.  The bark is attractively reddish-brown.

You can also see very happy red cedars growing along the cliff edges in Wildwood.  The one seen at right, for example, is growing directly above the weeping tufa formation at the entrance to the Park.  Red cedars commonly grow on bluffs and cliffs where there is but little soil trapped in cracks in the rocks, the soil often dries quickly, and the plants are exposed to full sunlight.  In this harsh envirnment they often grow very slowly.  Red cedars on the Palisades above the Hudson River are believed to be hundreds of years old.

Red cedars have been very valuable trees, because the wood is resistant to rot and repels insects.  Because of its rot resistance, the wood has been extensively used to make fence posts .  Its insect-repelling abilities make the wood useful to make liners for storage chests, which gives the name cedar chests to these furnishings.  The wood has also proved useful for making pencils.  An oil, cedarwood oil, can be distilled from the wood, and is used to scent soaps, as well as to produce insect repellant products for storing with woolens.  Ecologically, the plant is an important source of food for birds.